I think if I'd had a chance to follow P2 I might not have wanted to lead it either!

The traverse is very secure and there's a good spot for gear right at the end of it. I think I spied another placement just a few feet above, which may be the placement of which you speak. I foolishly passed this up, and then found myself committed a ways above my gear, which is a place I try to avoid being in. I was hanging there shaking out and looking fruitlessly for gear, and then finally just had to carry on, telling myself that I'm totally solid in this grade and just have to be careful to watch my feet. I was very grateful to get to the so-called belay stance, where I placed 2 C3s in the thin horizontal and could finally relax.

I think I still would have found it a little run out even if I'd used that placement a couple feet above my gear at the end of the traverse. Like I said, the climbing's great, especially in retrospect!

The first pitch has pro wherever you want it, it's a great lead. Bring a #5 (or larger cam!) if you want to protect the off-width at the top.

Ha ha, we all have the same conversations with ourselves up there on the cliff.ff I also add: "no one is going to come up here to bail me out, so I better start climbing".

I remember a bomber nut at the bottom of the open book. Maybe I am crazy.

Have you lead Double Crack yet? P1 of Erect Direction? (I have not lead P1 of Erect Direction. I thought I would, I seconded it twice and both times, despite the fact that it looks great, I thought it sucked.) I have my sights on Ant's line and Retribution. Hey, we all need goals right?

Regarding Basking Ridge, so I was going to do that last year, but we couldn't see where the traverse actually went. From the Baskerville anchors, the traverse looked amazingly thin on gear and holds; does it go straight right and then up to the final moves of Yellow Ridge, or does it diagonal up right, or does it go straight up from the anchors and then straight right across? You're right, it looked intimidating enough that we thought we'd easily get off-route, so we finished Baskerville instead.

Ha ha, we all have the same conversations with ourselves up there on the cliff.ff I also add: "no one is going to come up here to bail me out, so I better start climbing".

I remember a bomber nut at the bottom of the open book. Maybe I am crazy.

Have you lead Double Crack yet? P1 of Erect Direction? (I have not lead P1 of Erect Direction. I thought I would, I seconded it twice and both times, despite the fact that it looks great, I thought it sucked.) I have my sights on Ant's line and Retribution. Hey, we all need goals right?

FANTASTIC climb. Took me a while to get through the crux, but wow, what a great climb.

I led Double Crack, Ants' Line, and P1 of Erect Direction last year, all of them onsight, when I was in the best shape of my life and thought I could do anything. I loved 'em all. Leading Ants' Line as my first 5.9 lead was one of my proudest climbing moments. Double Crack and ED I found similar, Double Crack is longer and more sustained.

Re: Basking Ridge. Greg, I think you were suckered by the optional piton belay station on Baskerville Terrace, which is ABOVE the traverse you want. There is a good ledge probably 10 feet below those pitons that leads to the right into a left-facing corner capped by a roof. In this corner is where Dick wants you to build a belay. Then you traverse to the right on an upward slanting handrail with good feet, go around the corner, and you are directly below the finish to Yellow Ridge. Good gear placements right in the middle of the handrail and at the spot where you turn the corner.

I led Double Crack, Ants' Line, and P1 of Erect Direction last year, all of them onsight, when I was in the best shape of my life and thought I could do anything. I loved 'em all. Leading Ants' Line as my first 5.9 lead was one of my proudest climbing moments. Double Crack and ED I found similar, Double Crack is longer and more sustained.

Re: Basking Ridge. Greg, I think you were suckered by the optional piton belay station on Baskerville Terrace, which is ABOVE the traverse you want. There is a good ledge probably 10 feet below those pitons that leads to the right into a left-facing corner capped by a roof. In this corner is where Dick wants you to build a belay. Then you traverse to the right on an upward slanting handrail with good feet, go around the corner, and you are directly below the finish to Yellow Ridge. Good gear placements right in the middle of the handrail and at the spot where you turn the corner.

I hope that makes sense.

I can sort of visualize this, so it does make sense. Thanks. I'll check that out when I go back to do it at some point. I'm pretty sure we were looking from the pitons.

Regarding Basking Ridge, so I was going to do that last year, but we couldn't see where the traverse actually went. From the Baskerville anchors, the traverse looked amazingly thin on gear and holds; does it go straight right and then up to the final moves of Yellow Ridge, or does it diagonal up right, or does it go straight up from the anchors and then straight right across? You're right, it looked intimidating enough that we thought we'd easily get off-route, so we finished Baskerville instead.

I did an accidental linkup once. I was trying to do Elder Cleavage but got lost and ended up doing parts of Up Yours, Loose Goose and Elder Cleavage, which I named Up Your Loose Cleavage

Regarding Basking Ridge, so I was going to do that last year, but we couldn't see where the traverse actually went. From the Baskerville anchors, the traverse looked amazingly thin on gear and holds; does it go straight right and then up to the final moves of Yellow Ridge, or does it diagonal up right, or does it go straight up from the anchors and then straight right across? You're right, it looked intimidating enough that we thought we'd easily get off-route, so we finished Baskerville instead.

I did an accidental linkup once. I was trying to do Elder Cleavage but got lost and ended up doing parts of Up Yours, Loose Goose and Elder Cleavage, which I named Up Your Loose Cleavage

GBlauer...you think P1 of Erect Direction sucks? Man, Ihappen to think it is one of the best pitches of 5.8 in the Gunks. Too bad you don't like it.

RR

Maybe I am just a sucky climber! It looks great, but, it's so much harder/awkward than it looks. I would rather lead Trapped like a Rat!

And yes P2/P3 were so much better than P1. P3 roof was quite a hoot for this little shorty. At one point I had only 1 point of contact on the rock. It was an effort to pull the roof and just when I was hoping for a good stance, I found myself in awkard position before the final moves.

Given all pitches together, Erect Direction gets a nomination for best route in the Gunks. All 3 are stellar. That being said, the first pitch is fine on it's own. Gblauer, have you done Double Crack yet? Both are very very similar.

This trip occurred 3 weeks ago. The route was The Cave Route on the Pulpit, in the Sandia range. We began by hiking up the 4.2 miles to the start of the climb, this took roughly 2.5 hours, longer than Mark could do it in of course.

Mark agreed to lead the whole route since I don't have the balls to onsite lead yet. We also chose to link the 4 pitches into two, which was a good idea since that gave us a solid chain anchor and a large tree as belays.

Mark lead relatively quickly the first route. As I was following and cleaning the first pitch, I came upon the crux which was a chimney that constricted at the top forcing a transition into a open hand crack for a short distance. It took me a while to figure out the move, but I finally did it and eventually the pitch clean.

The second pitch had a very weird start, an overhanging roof with a crack too big for hands. Mark did it clean somehow. I was not so luck and actually chose to Prusick over this after 3 or 4 tries.

Once I got past this point, and got back on the rock, I was at the top of a small arete that ended on a small ledge. For those of you who've climbed this route, you will recall a old school 1/4 inch rusted and spinning bolt as your only protection on a rather blank face. There happens to be a nice larg vertical knob that is flat and excepts a smear/stem though, and I made it fine to there.

At this point I was able to just get my hands up to the left, over my left foot, to a pretty large ledge. As I pulled myself towards the ledge I had to put more and more force against my left smeared foot. Eventually, this caused my foot to fail as I felt, but did not hear, tow large pops in my calf area on the left leg. Luckily I was able to stay on the rock and somehow grabbed the next draw, attached to a cam above the ledge and french up to stand on the ledge.

There wasn't a lot of pain in the leg unless I tried to weight the front of the foot or the toes. I wasn't going up, that was for sure.

I communicated my situation to mark. He was about 100' up though and it took some yelling and re-yelling to eventually work out the plan.

Luckily we had brought a tag line to link the descent. We were not sure if I could have been lowered to the ledge since I was traversed a bit, and was unfamiliar with the route enough not to notice where the last belay ledge was. Mark rapped to me however, we ascertained I could in fact use the second line to rap down to the ledge. After this, Mark soloed up, I had an ascender he rigged for self belay, and then rapped down to me.

One more rap got us to the bottom. We found a stick that I used for the hike out, which took 3 hours.

I've almost completely recovered however, the nurse that saw me the next day after the climb gave me some good drugs and a pair of crutches, but no permanent damage was thought to have been done.

I have been a weekday warrior for the last several days. So much fun climbing at the Gunks with John, Doug, Bett and Jenn. Doug, Jenn and Bett are new leaders, so I have been enjoying mellow climbing while the new leaders learn their skills. So far so good, everyone is really doing a great job honing their placements.

We have done some fun climbs during the last week including:

Groovy (10a variation) CCK (photos galore) Dat-mantel (crazy roof move, the butt scrunch) Try Again (yes, I had to try again) Balrog Sheep THrills (I wouldn't recommend, very R-X rated, we thought we were on Balrog) Fly Again (Very hard, thank you John for hauling me up the thin seam) Mother's Day Party (I hate that crimper rail...) Le Teton (nice exposure, watch out for hornet's nest at the arete) Abusrdland ("trust me John, you will like it") A very wet Apoplexy (cleaned the gear after a major thunderstorm.)

It's nice to be a "local", so much more relaxed. I came and went from the cliff several times in a day...mixing work with climbing.

Thank you John and Doug, it's been so much fun climbing with you. I will miss you when you head back to your lives. Your patience, sense of humor and willingness to climb with an old lady is very much appreciated.

This is a tricky climb, it's the only 10 I have fallen on at the Gunks.

In reply to:

Sheep THrills (I wouldn't recommend, very R-X rated, we thought we were on Balrog)

Do you mean Cheap Thrills? I liked this climb.

In reply to:

Fly Again (Very hard, thank you John for hauling me up the thin seam)

Haven't tried this one yet.

In reply to:

Mother's Day Party (I hate that crimper rail...)

Like this one too.

In reply to:

Le Teton (nice exposure, watch out for hornet's nest at the arete)

Glad I already did this one. I HATE hornets! I wonder if it's because this section was closed for a while, so the hornets moved in.

In reply to:

Abusrdland ("trust me John, you will like it")

also good

In reply to:

A very wet Apoplexy (cleaned the gear after a major thunderstorm.)

Good climb, but I don't know being wet.

Overall a very nice list there, Gail. Not sure when we are getting back. We are headed to Acadia for a few days and then shipping out to Squamish for about 8 days. When we get back we will head back to the Gunks. I still want to try Carbs and Caffeine. Depending on how I do on that, eventually Yellow Wall (If I'm not too scared, that is)

Last Monday I did Madame G's and the party that came up right behind us disturbed a hornet's nest right before the hanging belay at the end of pitch 2. The leader got stung but she made it through okay.

Persistent, if done from the bottom of the crack to the top of the route has to be almost 100'. Yeah, it does sound like John is tearing it up if he got on that! he tore up Lost City when we went out there a few weeks ago. He didn't even remotely look like he was struggling until I put him on Resistance. Did he get on Harvest Moon?

John took a 30 footer at Lost City on Persistent. He is nursing his rope burn...

John is one heck of a climber.

Pumped out near that top? Damn, I'd think a 30 footer on that route would put you on the talus. I've never seen anyone lead that.

I was pretty darn close to the talus. Also, I was upside down. Nice way to get the blood pumping, and flowing for that matter. I really thought I was going to make it. On my first lead I took a small fall and a take, so I was sure it would go on the second. My partner pulled the gear, I racked up with just the gear I needed, and was cruising the route until I got to the painful hand jams at the top. I racked my red camalot on the wrong side of my harness, making it unreachable. I couldn't place the piece, so I said a quick swear and decided to go for it. Usually when I make the "go" rather than "pro" decision, I am confident that I won't fall. This time, I knew I was falling either way, but going for it seemed to have a slightly higher chance of success. I made a few moves, pumped silly, and threw for a hold that wasn't really there. In my fatigued state, I didn't notice the rope behind my leg. The second I started falling, it was obvious. I had plenty of time to think about it too. "When am I getting flipped," played over and over in my head until it was superseded by another thought, "oh, there it is". The flip knocked the wind out of me, and I found my self swaying, upside down, about five feet above the talus. I was glad my blue tcu held. I wasn't so glad about the rope burn, blood flowing down my leg. I boinked up the rope, finished the climb, lowered off, and finally took off my harness. At this point I was pretty much done. I wasn't going to climb anymore that day, but there was a top rope up on Yellow Streak and I couldn't help myself. Fun climb. It would be a rather necky lead. Overall, it was a pretty good day of climbing rocks at the Lost City. Fun place.